


The Secret of Red

by HomuraBakura



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Six Years Post Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 08:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7970401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomuraBakura/pseuds/HomuraBakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saki, a young student who can see Duel Spirits, is absolutely devastated to find out that she has been placed into Osiris Red, the notorious lowest ranked dorm in Duel Academy.  However, she might find that the dorm has much more to it than first meets the eye...and what is this rumor about a so-called monster that haunts the dorm?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secret of Red

**Author's Note:**

> Written for GX Month, Prompt: First Day of School
> 
> I don't even know what happened here, I just wanted to write something about my headcanon about Osiris Red post-series after Judai and Johan get their hands on it, and I ended up with two new OCs that I fell in love with and a GX sequel idea that I actually want to continue, but don't have time to ;w;
> 
> I might continue this someday with the adventures of the new Osiris Red dorm (a sort of My Hero Academia kind of story) but for now, this is all I have.

“Ehhh....that time of year again, huh?”

Judai swung his legs over the side of the tree branch, letting them dangle as he rested his head on his hands and his elbows on his thighs. Concealed up in the leaves, he was invisible from the gaggle of children that chased each other down the street, their blazers in varying states of being buttoned. One kid tripped over an untied shoelace and went tumbling face first towards the sidewalk—but his friend turned around just in time and caught him by the hand. Judai couldn't help but smile as the two grade schoolers laughed and ran on, still holding hands.

He let out a heavy sigh, cracking his back.

“ _What's on your mind this time, Judai?”_ Yubel thought at him as he rose to stand on the branch, one hand pressed to the trunk.

He grinned at the astral projection of his friend. In the distance, he could hear school bells clanging, the babble of voices all tumbling over each other as children all headed back to school. He tugged his by now almost threadbare jacket back over his shoulders.

“Isn't it obvious?” he said.

He looked up into sky, peeking between patches of leaves over head. He grinned even wider.

“I think it's about time to bother the newest batch of freshman, don't you think?”

* * *

“Ooooh, you're in Osiris Red?? Unluckyyyyy~~”

“Shut up, Kaede,” Saki said, her face burning as red as the jacket clutched in her arms.

Kaede laughed, her yellow hair flouncing around her face. Saki flushed even redder as she pulled the jacket tight against her chest, as though she could somehow make it disappear.

The day was bright, clear, and cool, the best days of spring. Clouds floated lazily overhead, casting their brief shadows over the wide grounds of Duel Academy. It was everything Saki had imagined it would be, the wide green campus, the iconic domes of the school in the distance, the pillars at each corner of the island, the vibrant green woods, her best friend Kaede at her side.

Well, everything except for the red jacket...

Kaede laughed again, shoving Saki playfully with one hand. She was shorter than Saki, with a broader, plumper frame, and her perfectly coiffed golden hair was a perfect match to her yellow uniform.

“Come on, you won't even put it on? You're still a student of _the_ Duel Academy! Isn't that what you wanted?”

“Yeah, but...” Saki mumbled, letting her head droop so that her long black hair would fall over her eyes, hoping Kaede wouldn't see that she was on the verge of tears.

Osiris Red? That was the lowest level—and everyone knew it! How was she going to become a pro duelist with that kind of a reputation hanging over her head? And there were rumors that it had the worst dorm, the worst food, the worst living conditions, and teachers would treat you badly if you were in red! How was she going to be able to pull herself into Ra Yellow with those kind of things hanging over her head?

“It's just a jacket, Saki-chan,” Kaede said. She leaned down with her hands clasped behind her back, trying to see under Saki's bangs. “Come on, Ki-chan. Cheer up, give me a smile!”

Saki quickly jerked her head up, blinking quickly to make sure the tears weren't leaking free. She shook her head a few times.

“Y-yeah, you're right! I'll be in Ra Yellow with you before you know it!”

Kaede clapped Saki on the shoulder so hard that Saki almost fell over.

“That's the spirit!! You can do it, Saki, I'll be cheering for you all the way! Now come on, we're going to miss the opening ceremony!”

She laughed as she started off after the rest of the pack, her bright, cheerful face as golden and warm as her uniform. Saki hesitated, though, looking back down at the red fabric clutched in her arms.

What had she done wrong? She had been at the top of her class in middle school—Kaede had been the one to struggle and laugh her way lazily through school, squeaking past with barely passing grades. The test had been easy, and she had won against the examiner, which she had only seen a few other people do at the test! The only thing that had sort of thrown her off guard was that strange interview, which she had been told was a new addition to the acceptance process. But even then, the man that had interviewed her had been incredibly nice and put her totally at ease, and she hadn't stumbled or tripped up on any of the questions he had asked her about her career goals.

A soft paw touched her shoulder, and she glanced up to see Companion of the Destruction Swordsmaster—or, rather, Angel, as she called him—crawling over her shoulder, staring at her with his big, shiny black eyes. He purred once, tilting his head and shifting his wings in a question. Saki had to smile, reaching over to ruffle his fluffy ears.

“I'm okay, Angel,” she said. “I'll be okay.”

She looked down one more time at the jacket in her arms. Then she took a deep breath, and flapped it out, swinging it up and over her shoulders.

“I guess I'll just have to own it,” she said. Angel huffed in agreement, poking his little horns against her face as he tried to nuzzle her.

* * *

The opening ceremony was so _long_...how much longer did they have to stand here listening to the principal talk?

“Psst!”

Saki didn't look up, her eyes glazing over as she looked into the middle distance, her brain spacing far, far away. She was used to not reacting to sounds, she had to always pretend that she didn't hear Angel, or people would think she was crazy for talking to something that wasn't there.

“ _Psst!”_

She jumped, biting back a yelp as a finger dug into her back. A few heads turned towards her, and she felt her face turning red again. She sat perfectly still until all the faces looked away from her, and only then did she glance quickly over her shoulder to see who had poked her.

A grinning boy in a long Obelisk jacket leaned towards her, his head on top of his folded hands.

“Hey, dropout girl,” he whispered. “Have you heard about what happens in Osiris Red?”

“Excuse me?” Saki said under her breath, voice quivering in spite of herself.

“Hey, hey, don't bite,” the boy said with a soft laugh, holding up his hands. “I'm trying to do you a favor—I'm trying to warn you about the rumors.”

“Well keep your favors to yourself,” Saki said, wishing her face wasn't so horribly red. “I don't talk to people that talk to me like that.”

She turned herself around with a huff, folding her shaking hands into her lap. Angel looked up from where he was curled up on the floor, blinking once. She could see his feathers ruffling a bit and she knew that he was agitated because she was. She had to try and calm down, or Angel might start biting people again.

The boy poked her between the shoulders again, and it took everything she had not to jump up and scream at him to stop touching her.

“Look, red girl,” the boy whispered. “I'm just trying to do you the favor of warning you. They say a monster haunts the Osiris Red dorm. Didn't you hear? Make sure you close your windows at night.”

Saki's hands curled up into her lap, her jaw clenching. She knew this game. He and his friends were probably going to be hazing the Osiris Red dorm or something. They'd spread some silly rumor about a monster, and then they'd play pranks on the dorm. Well, she wasn't falling for it! She wouldn't even give him the satisfaction of reacting!

“I'm not lying,” the boy hissed again. “They say it looks like a former Osiris Red student—maybe the ghost of someone who died there or something. It's got wings like a dragon, and it eats DA students that go out after dark.”

“Fuck off,” she hissed over her shoulder.

He shrugged, leaning back into his chair.

“Don't say I didn't warn you.”

Saki rolled her eyes. Angel bumped against her legs and hissed softly. _Want me to bite him?_ His eyes were saying.

She nudged him back down with her foot. No biting today. She shook her head with a huff. Stupid, entitled Obelisks. There wasn't any monster in the dorm.

* * *

Osiris Red was just about as bad as she had expected. She half expected the bunk bed to collapse under her weight when she leaned against it.

Saki glanced around the room, lips pressing together. She felt the tears rising up in her throat again—what were her parents going to say about this when they heard? She still remembered crying her eyes out when she had brought home an A- and her father had chewed her out about the minus, and her mother had asked where the other 10% of her effort had disappeared. Geez, when they heard she was a Red....

“Gosh, and it's stuffy,” she groaned. She dropped her bag with a fwump onto the floor and stalked over to the window, flinging it open. Ahhh....that was much better. She stood there for a moment to let the cool night air wash over her, closing her eyes against the breeze.

“....you're supposed to keep the windows closed....”

The voice came out of nowhere and Saki screamed in spite of herself. She whipped around, eyes wide and mouth suddenly dry as her hands flailed up and down. Angel, where was Angel? There was someone in her room and—

The bottom bunk shifted, and what she had thought was a lumpy pillow suddenly moved, rising up.

“Don't scream....it's annoying....”

Saki bit off her second yelp as the lump revealed itself to be a person. She was so tiny that Saki could barely believe that she was a high school student—standing up she probably wouldn't even reach Saki's shoulders. She looked almost like a doll, with fair, pale skin and short white hair in tight bob around her chin. She rose one hand up to rub at her big, doe-brown eyes, her hands covered by the too-long sleeves of her nightgown.

“W-w-what??” Saki managed to stutter out. “I mean—when did you get here?”

The girl just blinked at Saki for a moment, her expression completely unchanging. Then she bowed briefly.

“Nice to meet you. I'm your roommate, Ueno Miu.”

What kind of an introduction was that??? It took Saki a few more moments to recompose herself, her mouth hanging open for almost a minute before she scrambled back to her senses.

“U-um, nice to meet you! I'm Yamaguchi Saki.”

Miu yawned widely, blinking through sleepy eyes. For a moment, absolute silence rang between them. Saki felt her stomach doing flip-flops—geez, what was up with this girl?

“Uh, um, what did you say about the windows?” she said quickly, trying to get the words flowing again.

Miu blinked. Then she looked slowly over to the window. She stared at it for a few moments, and then slowly turned her gaze back to Saki.

“Miu just heard that we....shouldn't open them...” she said, yawning. “Monster...or something.”

Saki blinked. Then her conversation with the Obelisk boy from before came back to her. She blew out, making her bangs flutter as she put her hands on her hips.

“Oh _that_? I'm pretty sure that's just some dumb rumor that the upperclassmen are trying to scare us with. Besides, it's way too hot to keep the windows closed right?”

“Miu doesn't care,” Miu mumbled. “Miu just wants to finish a nap...”

Angel dropped down heavily from the rafters where he had been exploring, landing with a fwump on the bed. Miu didn't so much as flinch—which was normal, because she shouldn't be able to see or hear Angel.

Except she did look up—coincidence, right?

Angel crawled over the side of the bed, tail whipping back and forth as he looked curiously into the shadows of the bottom bunk. Miu's eyes inexplicably moved right to Angel's face—and moved with him as he crawled under and landed on the bunk next to her.

“Ah,” Miu said, tilting her head. “Fluffy.”

Saki felt her eyes bulge, her heart catch on a beat.

“W-what? You can see her??”

“Mmhm,” Miu said, patting Angel with one hand, touching Angel's wings curiously. Angel, for his part, was soaking up the attention, purring and pushing into her hand. “Miu has one too...see...?”

She waved her hand vaguely towards the bed, and a lump in the covers suddenly shivered. Saki's mouth dropped open as she saw the little lump wriggle under the covers until it popped free—a bright pink cat's head with a hat that looked like a fruit tart peered out, blinking sleepy eyes at the world. It crawled itself over to Miu and dragged itself into her lap, letting out a tiny sigh.

“This is Mewfeuille,” Miu said. “Say hi, Mewfeuille.”

“Y-you can see Duel Spirits too??” Saki said, her head reeling. “W-how??”

“Miu doesn't know,” Miu said with yet another yawn. “But Miu thinks maybe you should...close the window.”

Saki couldn't quite process what was happening—what were the chances that her roommate at DA could also see spirits? She had never met anyone ever that could see them before!! Miu's comment about the window, though, brought at least some of her irritable old self back.

“I'm telling you, there's no monster,” she said. “See, I mean, look, it's just dark outside, people get scared of the dark and make up stories.”

She stalked over to the window, more to pretend like nothing was blowing her mind right now than anything else. She poked her head out into the cool night—this was a pretty big window for the size of the room, she thought. Big enough to climb out of, if she wanted...although she was one floor up, so that probably wasn't a good idea.

“See, there's literally no monster out there,” Saki said, leaning back out of the window. “Those Obelisk kids are just trying to psyche us out—”

“Huh, so I'm a monster this year?”

Saki's eyes whipped back to the window at the sound of the new voice.

A face was hanging upside down in her window, his brown hair hanging limp from his head, brown eyes blinking at her with a placid, curious expression.

Saki screamed. She jerked back from the window, tripped over her own boots, and went tumbling to the floor with a painful twump.

Her head spun from the fall—in the background, she heard Angel hiss, saw the white blur of his wings as he shot at the window, heard a yelp and a scrabble of feet against the roof and then a loud scrabbly crash in the foliage below.

Even Miu looked surprised by this turn of events, her eyes wide, and her face for once not looking completely sleepy, sitting straight up and staring at the window.

Both of them sat there for a long moment, no one speaking or moving. Finally, Miu got herself off of the bed and shuffled over to the window, leaning out.

“He fell,” she said. “Miu thinks he...no, he's okay.”

A voice twirled up to them from the ground below.

“In hindsight,” the man said, “I definitely deserved that.”

* * *

“ _You're fucking stupid,”_ Yubel said.

He had to laugh—yes, he was very stupid, but he was feeling super good today so that was okay! He couldn't stop himself from grinning, even though he knew it was probably unnerving the girls standing at the door of their dorm room, staring at him with uncertainty as he stood outside on the balcony.

“Sorry about that!” he said. “I just got kind of excited—it's been a year or two since I came to see new kids here!”

He looked up and down the row of doors on the balcony—the dorm was definitely bigger than he remembered! They had added a new wing, he was pretty sure. Oooh, nice, separate wings to accommodate everyone this time, huh? About time Osiris got the extra space, especially with Johan's new program sending more and more kids to Osiris.

“Let me start over,” Judai said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “I'm Judai. Yuki Judai.”

“Are you a monster?” the white haired girl said, completely dead-pan.

“Does he look like a monster??” the black haired girl said, waving one hand up and down, the other arm clutching her little winged cat creature to her chest—it was still glaring at him. He probably deserved that too. “No! No he does not! He might, though, look like a pervert! Who are you and what are you doing here?? You're in an Osiris jacket but you're definitely too old to be a student—”

“Whoa, whoa!” Judai said, laughing in spite of himself. “Slow down, you're going to choke yourself. I said I was starting over, okay?”

He cleared his throat into his fist.

“I guess, on one hand, I _am_ kind of a monster,” he said. “A Duel Monster, like the ones that you guys have. Well, I'm half of one, anyway.”

Both girls blinked. They exchanged a glance. The white haired girl had to reach up to push her pink and purple cat back onto her shoulder, it was slipping down in its sleepiness. Those two were certainly a pair, weren't they? Judai felt that little thrill of excitement again. Man, why had he skipped the last two years visiting the dorm? Finding other kids with powers like his was the best high he could hope for—seeing the young, curious faces, and knowing that this time, they wouldn't have to deal with their powers alone.

“I'm not a student of DA, at least, not anymore,” he said, rubbing his nose with the back of his finger. “I graduated...what...six years ago? Yeah, six.”

“So what are you doing, then?” the black haired girl demanded. “Sneaking around on rooftops like some kind of creep?”

“I guess you could call me your unofficial dorm adviser,” Judai said, putting his fist on his chest. “So welcome to Osiris Red!”

“Some welcome,” the black haired girl mumbled.

Judai smiled. Okay, maybe he should cut to the chase before this girl starting hitting him or something. He whistled once, the sound cutting through the night.

Winged Kuriboh appeared immediately, swirling to life at his side.

“ _Kuri, kuri!!”_ she sang with delight, bumping into his face.

“Hey, partner!” he said. “Meet the new kids. Kids, this is Winged Kuriboh.”

The black haired girl's mouth dropped open, while the white haired girl's eyes widened a fraction.

“Y-you too??” the black haired girl said. “W-what's going on here??”

Judai nodded with a smile.

“See, that's why I said I was starting over,” he said. “This is Osiris Red—and Red is...well, a little special nowadays. I think you'll find that all of your dormmates have one kind of power or another.”

“Really?” the white haired girl said, cocking her head.

“Yup! Some can see Duel Spirits, like you. Some of them can make their monsters real during battle, some of them can materialize some form of energy, some of them might be part Duel Spirit themselves...well, you'll get the full spiel from Johan, your official dorm adviser, tonight at dinner.”

The black haired girl was staring at him—but not with disbelief, or irritation. Instead, there seemed to be some sort of dawning comprehension in her eyes.

“You mean...Osiris isn't the lowest ranking dorm? It's a....it's a dorm for, what, magical girls or something?”

Judai couldn't help but laugh, the sound rolling out of him with a brightness that he hadn't felt in a few weeks.

“That's close enough!”

He could have more time to talk about what Osiris used to be later. He could tell them about his times here, when he didn't know who he was or where he was going, the days when he had been the only member of this dorm, the days when he had been lonely because he didn't have anyone to share his experiences with. He could tell them about Johan's crazy idea, about using his own psychic sense to pick out the kids applying to Duel Academy who had powers, and filtering them all to one dorm. He could tell all the new kids about the day that he and Johan had walked into Samejima's office and slapped their idea down on the desk, and the way that Samejima's face had lit up at the program.

But tonight, the short version. He just felt himself swelling up with happiness just thinking about how many kids were here, how many kids he and Johan could help now because they wouldn't feel alone.

His home, Osiris Red, was becoming something greater than he could have ever imagined.

“You might be a little disappointed about being here because of the reputation, but that's mostly smoke and mirrors,” he said. “We try not to let the whole world know that we've got a little X-Men thing going on over here. For safety reasons, of course.”

He sent one last grin at the girls, two new Reds who had a future in front of them that he coudln't even guess. For the first time in a while, he felt excited thinking aobut that—about the future.

“Anyway, sorry to disturb you girls! I'll be seeing you at dinner tonight, I guess! Don't worry, the food's better than the rumors say, too. Get yourselves settled in!”

He nodded at them with another big grin, then turned towards the balcony and hopped onto the railing. He heard the black haired girl gasp, heard her foot slide across the threshold.

Then he released his wings, and dropped off the side of the balcony, soaring off into the night.

“ _Show off,”_ Yubel snorted.

“They were gonna know eventually,” he laughed.

He dove off into the night sky, letting the stars encircle him as he took in a deep, beautiful breath of the night air of Duel Academy.

“Yeah,” he said. “This is gonna be a good year.”

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Red Days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11974944) by [HomuraBakura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomuraBakura/pseuds/HomuraBakura)




End file.
